


The Last Godforsaken Thing

by iknowhowmystoryends (gorgeouschaos)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Suicidal Dean Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, There's A Tag For That, but permanent this time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28540008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/iknowhowmystoryends
Summary: No crossroads demon will deal with Dean after Sam gets killed.Sam stays dead.And Dean?Dean thinks he died that night in Cold Oak, Sam’s body in his arms and Sam’s blood on his hands, and everything that came after is just the Hell he’s made for himself.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Kudos: 9





	The Last Godforsaken Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Me: My WIP folder is rapidly expanding and I’m scared.  
> My friend: You probably should be.  
> Me: I don’t want to write another 20k word thing but I think I’m gonna.  
> My friend: So limit yourself to 5k. It’ll be fine.  
> Me: Ahahaha. Ha. Ha.  
> (… This is most likely not going to be 5k.)
> 
> Posted and deleted this one a while back. sams_spirit_halloween_wig told me I should keep working on this one, so here we are again.  
> Please heed the tags. There is some heavy suicidal ideation/thoughts and Dean gets close to suicide a few times.  
> Thanks for reading, hope you like it, and I love hearing from y'all.

Dean drove to the crossroads, buried the box, and waited.

No gorgeous woman with red eyes who smelled like sulfur appeared. Neither did anyone else.

Dean dropped to his knees in the middle of the dirt crossroads. He tilted his face up to the sky.

“Please,” he said. “I know I don’t… I know I’m not a good person. I know. But please, God,  _ someone _ , this is the only thing I’ve ever asked you for. I’ll do anything. Anything.”

Dean closed his eyes.

“Please. It’s Sammy. I’m begging you. I’ve never begged for anything in my entire life. Please. Bring him back. Bring my brother--”

Dean’s voice broke as he started sobbing. He couldn’t say anything else.

No one appeared.

The ringing of Dean’s phone shook him from his daze. He stumbled over to the Impala, slid inside, and grabbed his mobile. His hands were numb and shaking.

“Dean?” Bobby’s voice was gruffer than usual.

“Yeah.”

“Where the hell are you, boy?”

Dean leaned his forehead onto the Impala’s steering wheel. “I’m fine, Bobby. I’m headed to the Devil’s Gate.”

“Dean--”

Dean tossed the phone into the backseat. It rang. He ignored it.

Dean drove until about 50 miles outside of Laramie. He pulled off the road and parked the Impala.

“I know, Sammy,” he told the empty space beside him. “But I can’t leave you. I’d never be able to do this without you.”

Dean opened the glove box and pulled his pistol out. He turned the gun over in his hands.

John had taught him and Sam where to aim to kill someone with a single headshot. Dean remembered John’s calloused hands over his as he held a gun to his father’s forehead.

“Right here, Dean. Nothing human gets up from a double-tap here.”

Dean climbed onto the Impala’s hood, fixed his eyes on the stars, and pressed the barrel of his gun against his forehead.

He could almost pretend Sam was beside him, just like always. Soon enough he would be.

Dean could hear his phone ringing.

He flicked the safety off his gun.

Bobby was probably getting Dean’s voicemail. Sam had made fun of Dean’s message every time he heard it.

Dean’s finger was no longer steady on the trigger.

“I can’t do this without you, Sammy,” he said to the spot to his right where Sam should be. “I can’t. I can’t  _ fucking do this without you _ .”

Sammy would never leave Dean another message, would never watch the stars again, would never be here again.

Sammy wouldn’t want him to do this.

Dean put the gun down.

“Okay, Sammy,” he told the stars. “Okay. I’ll wait.”

Azazel needed to die. Once the yellow-eyed demon was dead, maybe Dean wouldn’t hear Sam telling him to keep going.

Dean answered his phone.

“Yeah. Fine. Headed there right now.”

He turned the Impala on. His Baby came to life with the rumble that was the only constant he had left.

“Yeah. Okay. Burn his body.”

_ Just a little longer, Sammy. _

Dean said nothing more.

Nothing when Jo and Ellen and Bobby tried to talk to him; nothing when he shot Jake through the stomach so he’d die slow and painful; nothing when Azazel taunted him and said Sam’s name like he had any right to it; nothing when the Devil’s Gate opened.

Dean just did what he had to do for Sam.

Dean spoke only when he was standing over Azazel. He’d had to use Sam’s knife to get the bastard off of him, but he’d done it.

“This is for Sam,” he said, and he double-tapped the yellow-eyed demon through the head just like John had taught him to. 

Dean left without saying anything else. 

Thousands of demons had escaped from Hell, maybe more.

_ Little more work to do, Sammy. It’ll just be a little longer now. _

__ Dean spent the year after Sam died on auto-pilot. His days passed in a blur of blood and shitty motel rooms and the constant gaping hole in everything he was. He stopped taking cases where he had to talk to people and stuck to the quick and dirty ones. Mostly Dean stalked and killed demons.

The only thing he bothered to keep track of was how many days it had been since Cold Oak.

It was the only thing that mattered, now that Sammy was gone.

(The hunters talked in hushed tones about Dean Winchester. They said he’d gone off the deep end without his brother, that he’d lost his conscience, that he was a monster that was barely more tame than the ones he put down. 

Bobby Singer drank and remembered when two kids in too-big flannels had called him Uncle Bobby.)

Dean answered the phone when the hospital called about Bobby. His voice barely worked when he picked up, but he forced himself to talk.

It was Bobby. Dean would do about anything for Bobby.

“You’re not afraid of anything.” the dreamwalker said slowly. “I can’t do anything with that. How…”

Dean smiled. It was the smile that Sam had hated, the one that had made John watch him a little warily.

“Nothing scares me anymore.”

“Isn’t that from a song?”

Dean double-tapped the dreamwalker through the head. It was a habit by now to aim for the head.

“Maybe,” he told the body. The dreamscape dissolved around him.

Dean had been listening to the radio more, lately. Every song on his tapes sounded like Sam laughing in the passenger seat.

Dean left Bobby with a whispered, “Sorry.”

He hit the road again. He was putting down demons like there was no tomorrow and he couldn’t let them run.

_ Just a little longer, Sammy _ .

It had been 16 months since Sam died when an angel showed up in Dean’s hotel room.

The sound of fluttering wings woke Dean up. He grabbed the gun under his pillow and rolled out of bed, aiming it at the intruder. The light from the neon sign outside let Dean see the man he was pointing a gun at.

The intruder looked unperturbed. “Hello, Dean.”

“Who the hell are you?” Dean growled. 

“My name is Castiel. I am an angel of the Lord.”

Dean cocked his gun. “Get out before I shoot you.”

“You do not believe.”

Dean fired. The bullet hit home in Castiel’s chest, but the “angel” didn’t bleed.

Dean scrambled for his blessed iron knife.

“Be not afraid,” Castiel said.

“Do I look afraid to you?”

Castiel tilted his head. "You do not look afraid, no. However, your anger is disguising a profound fear."

Dean stabbed the asshole. Unfortunately, said asshole did not seem to be phased. 

“This is unnecessary,” Castiel said, pulling the knife from his chest. Dean backed away.

The light outside blew up. The room didn’t go dark, though. A white-blue light was spilling out of Castiel, bright enough for Dean to see the vast silhouettes of wings spreading behind him.

“Oh,” Dean breathed.

“Indeed.” Castiel’s glow faded and went out. “Would you like to turn on the lights? I believe humans prefer to converse when they can see their conversational partner.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean croaked. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Gimme a sec.”

“A… sec?”

“Second.” Dean flipped the lights on. 

“It has been longer than one second, Dean,” Castiel said.

Dean sighed and started pulling on his jeans. “Figure of speech, Castiel.”

By the time Castiel left, Dean’s voice was rasping. He hadn’t spoken that much since before Cold Oak. 

Dean stared at his phone and contemplated calling Bobby. He decided his voice wouldn’t be up for a phone call. He also wasn’t sure if he’d charged it in the past month.

He did his best to sleep and hit the road early the next morning.

Bobby opened his door and greeted Dean with a splash of holy water.

Dean turned his head to the side and spat out a mouthful of it. “Really?”

“Better safe than sorry and all that shit,” Bobby said. He yanked Dean into a long hug. 

Dean closed his eyes against the sting of tears.

“Been a long time, boy,” Bobby said, sliding Dean a beer. “Too long. I was worried.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

Dean took a long sip. He hoped the liquid would keep his voice working long enough. 

“So why are you here? Not that I ain’t glad to see ya, God knows I’ve been hoping you’d stop by, but knowing you? You’re here for a reason.”

“Lucifer’s gonna break out,” Dean said.

Bobby blinked and took a sip of beer. “Balls.”

Dean told Bobby everything. Or, almost everything. He left out the part about having had an angel watch him get dressed with alien interest. 

“You get yourself tangled up with every goddamn cosmic showdown there is, don’t you?” Bobby sighs. 

“Looks like.” Dean stared at his hands. “I don’t know what to do, Bobby. This? This is so far above my paygrade, I have no idea what I’m even supposed to be doing.”

“We’ll figure it out, boy,” Bobby promised. “We will.”

“Yeah.”

Dean didn’t say what he was thinking, which was:  _ what’s the fucking point, without Sam? _

The world wasn’t worth saving if his brother wasn’t in it.

Dean woke up to find an angel standing in Bobby’s kitchen. 

“What if I tell you to fuck off?” Dean asked. “What if I don’t want to? You took my brother, why would I do anything for you?”

“Heaven took in your brother,” Castiel said. “He’s waiting for you in the Heaven the two of you are destined to share, but I could throw him into Hell, if necessary. Or you. A few decades on the Rack would do wonders to improve your attitude.”

The sound of Castiel’s wings as he flew away took the breath from Dean’s lungs.

_ Sammy _ .

Even dead, the kid was still being used against him. At least Dean knew Sam was okay, as long as Dean played ball.

It was a foregone conclusion that he would.

Sam’s ghost didn’t show up with the Witnesses. 

Dean knew Sam’s death was his fault, but hearing it from Sam himself…

Dean wasn’t sure if he could have lived with it. He’s been walking along the razor’s edge since Cold Oak ( his entire life ) but that could have been the thing to break him.

“Castiel?” Dean asked the sky, more than a little drunk. “I, uh, I’ve got a question for you. It’s about this whole Heaven-Hell bullsh-- ah, BS.” 

Dean was going to have to work on his language. It would be a little awkward to be smited-- smote? Man, that word was weird-- for swearing, considering everything he’d survived.

He wasn’t expecting an answer. Therefore, when Castiel’s deep voice said, “Hello, Dean,” Dean threw an elbow and slid off the hood.

“That was unwise,” Castiel commented, watching as Dean flexed his arm and tried not to yelp. 

“Instinct,” Dean gritted out. “Sorry.”

The angel settled onto the Impala’s hood. He offered Dean a hand. Dean took it with his good arm and was lifted off the ground with ease.

“Man,” Dean said. “You must eat your Wheaties.”

“I do not understand that reference.”

“It’s, uh, it’s not important.” Dean sat beside the angel, just far enough away to avoid sitting on the edge of his trench coat. Dean was on the wrong side-- he belonged on the left side, not the right-- but he let himself settle into the silence anyway. He was too weak to resist the pull of the good memories.

“You want a beer?” Dean offered. 

Castiel tilted his head. The motion was more avian than human. “No.” He paused before adding, “... Thank you.’

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Why did you call to me?” Castiel asked. “You said you had a question.”

“Right. Yeah.” Dean shrugged and stared off into the scrapyard. “Do suicides go to Hell?”

The ensuing pause made Dean’s face burn.

“It depends,” Castiel said slowly. “If a good person loses the fight against mental illness, or if a good person in a dark situation takes the only way out they can see, then no, they don’t go to Hell. It’s a matter of how they lived, not how they died, which determines their fate.”

Dean nodded.

“Was there anything else?” Castiel asked.

Dean almost asked the angel to stay.

“Nah. Thanks, Cas.”

The angel took long enough to respond that Dean almost apologized for the nickname.

“You are welcome, Dean.”

Castiel-- Cas-- vanished in a flurry of wings.

Dean twisted the top off of his next beer with his ring and very carefully did not think about the gun in the glovebox.

He was damned either way. There was no way he qualified as a good person after everything he’d done. Sam? Yeah, Sam getting into Heaven made sense. He was a good man to the core, a better man than Dad ever was, a better man than Dean had ever dreamed about being.

Dean was never going to get into Heaven, regardless of whether or not suicide would have damned him.

Dean was never going to see Sam again.

He didn’t realize he was crying for several minutes.

“You headed out?” Bobby asked. 

Dean felt a surge of guilt, but nodded anyway.

_ I’m doing this for you, Sammy. _

_ Everything I've done... It's always been for you. _

_ I don't regret any of it, Sammy. None of it. Not a single godforsaken thing. _

“What do you want from me, Cas?” Dean asked a few weeks later. He was sitting in his motel room staring at the spot where Sam’s bed should be. 

There was no answer. Dean opened a bottle of Jack and told himself he didn’t care.

Castiel appeared just as Dean was falling asleep. 

“Jesus!” Dean said, jerking upright.

“No. I’m Castiel.”

“I know who you are, Cas,” Dean muttered. “You just startled me.”

“I apologize,” the angel said. “I was… occupied.”

“Angel meeting? Deciding which kind of togas and harps are in style this eon?”

Castiel tilted his head. “We are formulating our strategy to keep Lucifer in the Cage.”

“Great.” Dean swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but, as always, Castiel had blindsided him. “Anything good?”

“We have work for you.”

“Yeah, you said that.” Dean scrubbed a hand over his face and headed into the bathroom. From the scruff beneath his fingers, he’d forgotten to shave again. He’d been doing that a lot lately.

From the taste in his mouth, he’d forgotten to brush his teeth, too.

Dean had been forgetting a lot of things, since Cold Oak, since Sam--

Since Sam.

Large chunks of time were escaping him, slipping through his fingers. Dean didn’t care and couldn’t find it in himself to be concerned. 

If anything, it was a mercy.

Castiel followed him into the motel bathroom and stood a little too close for comfort. Dean was too tired to care. He flicked on the lights and splashed some water on his face.

“We have--” Castiel began.

“If you say you have work for me again, I swear to God I will punch you, and it will be worth getting smote.”

The angel shut up. Dean glanced into the mirror, felt sorry for the guy-- Cas had kind of been handed a shitty job-- and sighed.

“Can you at least specify?”

“We need you to keep Hell from opening the Seals.”

“More specifics.”

Dean was learning how to read Castiel, and the angel was getting frustrated. If Dean wasn’t living with a death wish, he would have toned down his attitude a little.

Sam would have told him to.

Dean kept going. “I mean, you guys show up, threaten my brother, and then don’t have anything you want me to do? God must be really shitty at--”

Castiel slammed Dean into the wall, one hand around his throat. The strength in the angel’s fingers was inhuman. 

“I should kill you for speaking of my Father like that.”

“Do it, then,” Dean choked. “Just  _ fucking do it _ .”

Castiel’s eyes, blazing a furious blue, met Dean’s. Dean wasn’t sure what he was seeing in them, but it wasn’t anything angelic.

Dean closed his eyes and waited. At least it would be quick.

He opened his eyes when he felt the grip on his throat loosen after an eternity of silence. Castiel’s face had returned to impartiality. 

The angel stepped back and released Dean’s throat.

“There is nothing you can do at the moment,” Castiel said. “I will contact you when we have need of you.”

The sound of wings filled the motel room and the angel was gone.

Dean let himself slide to the floor.

Dean threw himself back into hunting. 

What else could he do? 

Heaven and Cas didn’t seem to have any use for him, demons were killing people, and Dean had never learned how to stop anyway.

Time slipped away more and more often. 

Dean blinked and found himself parked in front of a motel three states and four days away from the last place he remembered. 

He jolted awake that night to find Castiel staring at him.

“That’s really friggin’ creepy,” Dean informed the angel. “Just wake me up if you need something.”

“I am merely watching over you.”

“Yeah, well, you should’ve been watching over Sam, then,” Dean snapped. 

Castiel looked away. “We do not interfere in the affairs of humanity.”

“Seems like that’s all you dicks do,” Dean muttered. “What do you want, Cas?”

“I… I wanted to confirm your well-being.”

“I’m just peachy.”

“You do not remember the past four days, do you?” The question is rhetorical. 

Dean shrugs. “Not really. Something important happen?”

Castiel’s lips thin. “Apparently not.”

“The hell does that mean?”

Castiel’s shoulders, already ramrod straight, tense further. “It is irrelevant. You need to stop it.”

“Stop--”

Castiel’s fingers hit Dean’s forehead before Dean could get out more than one word of a question.

Dean blinked and he was sitting in the Impala, parked on the outskirts of a small town.

“What the hell, Cas?” he demanded of the sky.

The angel made no reappearance. Dean guessed Castiel was pissy about something or other-- probably whatever had happened in the past four days-- and decided to figure out what the cryptic bastard had meant. 

_ Be careful, Dean _ , Sam’s voice told him. 

Dean’s lips twitched up in a wry smile.  _ Ain’t no point without you, Sammy. _

__ Still, Dean shifts the car into drive. 

“We need to destroy the town,” Castiel says. Over Castiel’s shoulder, Uriel watches, his face inscrutable. 

“So what was the point of sending me here?”

“We wanted to see what you would do.”

Dean huffs incredulously. “Right.”

Castiel’s watching Dean like he’s waiting for something. Dean looks away. He can hear what Sam would be saying, because in his head his brother’s voice is urgent.

_ This isn’t right, Dean. Don’t let them do this. Stop it. There’s hundreds of innocent people here. _

__ But Sam’s gone.

“And that’ll keep the Seal from breaking?”

Castiel nods. 

Dean rubs a hand over his face. He remembered to shave at some point.

_ Dean _ . Sam’s voice is strained.  _ Don’t do this. _

But Sam’s gone, and Dean doesn’t have to care what his brother would have said, because he left.

“Do it,” Dean says.

Uriel smiles. Castiel bows his head.

In the silence after the sound of wings fades, Dean can’t hear Sam’s voice. 

Castiel finds Dean on a park bench in Ohio. Dean barely restrains his curse when the angel appears beside him.

“The Seal was preserved.”

“Figured as much.” Dean turns his gaze back towards the playground. Sam still isn’t talking to him. “I didn’t want you to do it, you know.”

“Yes.” Castiel looks out over the playground. “Neither did I.”

Dean blinks. He turns to study the angel’s face. “I didn’t think you knew what wanting something was.”

“Nor did I.” Castiel watches a little girl climb a slide, shrieking. His face softens a little. “But I begin to wonder.”

Dean nods. There’s something he’s been wondering for a while. 

“What happened in those four days, Cas?”

The faint smile on the angel’s face fades. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know. ‘Cause I can’t remember.”

Castiel turns his head towards Dean. As always, the intensity in his eyes makes Dean shift. “You were investigating a ghost who killed with fear. You were infected by the ghost sickness. I smote the ghost before you perished.”

Dean processes that. “Was I gonna have a heart attack or something?”

“After a series of unpleasant and terrifying hallucinations which featured what you fear most, yes.”

“Great.” Dean clears his throat. “What did I see?”

Castiel looks away. “I don’t know.”

“You’re a lousy liar, Cas.”

The angel does not respond. 

Dean sighs. Over the past year, he’s learned Castiel could be even more stubborn than Sam. There was no point in pushing. The angel would just fly away. “Anything else happen?”

“No.”

“Cas.”

The angel keeps his eyes fixed on the clouds. “It’s possible that you tried to kiss me.”

Dean chokes on air. “ _ What? _ ”

Castiel’s focus on the clouds intensifies. “You were drunk. I did not allow you to.”

“What?”

“I said that you--”

“No, I heard you. I just… I’m sorry I did that, Cas.”

Castiel stands up. “It does not matter. I must return to my duties.”

The angel vanishes. 

Dean buries his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ.”

_ Don’t be a dick, Dean, _ Sam tells him.  _ You know full well he’s the one thing keeping you going. _

“Shut up, Sam,” Dean mutters. He doesn’t acknowledge the surge of relief which Sam’s return caused. “You don’t get to be my wingman when you’re not even here.”

_ Jerk _ .

“Bitch,” Dean whispers. 

Dean speeds out of Ohio towards Louisiana going twenty over on the interstate. 

The world’s ending and Sam’s dead.

But his work isn’t done yet.

  
  
  



End file.
